Don’t be a “square”! You can rap with your kids about the drug scene.

How to Kick the Habit!
A Guide to Drug Withdrawal
Alexander and Alexander
1973

This book is super groovy and has lots of advice about methadone treatment and diet to help kick your drug habit. This book is such a throwback to the 70s, it is comical. Along with some advice about how you go about rescuing your child from the drug culture, there is a nice giant vocabulary list and some Q and A with the Doc to help you “rap with the kids”.

This book is still in “active” circulation in a public library and I would guess it to be one of the worst books that we have posted with regard to drug abuse and addiction. Weed it!

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I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact they seem to think the only way a woman can get pregnant is if she’s experiencing normal desire, or that they apparently don’t think a non-user can figure out what “buy” means when it comes to drugs.

That back cover humours me to no end! They make sure to point out that the first author is “eminently qualified to write this book”, and then proceed to list his various degrees and work in drug addiction and rehab. Then they list the qualifications of the second author who seems to have only got the job because she’s the sister of the “eminently qualified” one. Her resume is all over the place with random books and articles, but hey she must be qualified because she’s travelled extensively.

How did this collection of unsupportable pseudoscience make it into print?! (Man, my friends and I would have ROTFL over this one back in the day. Not that I hung around with shooters of heroin, I hasten to state.) To answer my own question, I took to the Internet, and remarkably enough, the publisher is still around. From Wikipedia: “Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc. is an independent American publishing company specializing in self-help books in genres such as business, entertainment, children, health, and cooking. Their motto is ‘A World of Books That Fill A Need’. They have published titles such as Demystifying Business With Cookies And Elephants and So Eat, My Darling: A Guide to the Yiddish Kitchen. Many of their titles fall in the wide range of Fell’s Official Know-It-All Guide, with titles such as Fell’s Official Know-It-All Guide: How to Help Your Child Excel at Math and Fell’s Official Know-It-All Guide to Advanced Hypnotism.” I would say that How to Raise Your Own Mink Coat fits right in.

As an alternative title to “How to Raise Your Own Dog Coat,” may I suggest “Knitting with Dog Hair” (an ALB alum). My library owns it, it is currently checked out and has checked out 39 times!
Sorry to say, we have somehow missed the mink coat book, though. I am bummed.

The Scot in me (obvious from my name) actually said “who would be mean enough to name their son Sandy Alexander? That’s like naming your kid Jimmy James or Bobby Roberts!” (Sandy is the uiniversal Scots nickname for the very-common-in-Scotland Alexander.) Then I said “Wait, that’s the doc’s wife, brought in to add a female perspective, right?” When I saw the photos and read the bios, I lost it. That honestly looks like something assembled by The Onion.
And the worst part is, such shlock sells and circulates well, as parodied by that episode of “Family Guy” where Brian finally caves and assembles a farcical, cliche-laden “self-help” book, “Wish It, Want It, Get It!”, and becomes a best-selling author as long as he can grit his teeth and mouth balderdash in public appearances……